Just bought a house and this plant is growing on the side of my house. Someone told me that I should remove it as it will dry out the bricks and will make them crumble in the long term. Is that true? Should I remove this?
Welcome to the forum Sohaiba. I think that you have a wisteria there but a closer view of the leaves would help to confirm.
Your bricks look well pointed so you have nothing to worry about at all. Keep it controlled to where it is - i.e. don't let it scramble to the eaves of your roof - and you will be able to enjoy it.
Cacoethes: An irresistible urge to do something inadvisable
@obelixx has done gorgeous wisteria … hopefully she’ll see this and give you some advice on how to prune and care for it so you can enjoy its beautiful blooms.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Plants that put out aerial roots could destroy your brick work, Wisteria doesn’t do that, it need wires to be tied to, its not self clinging. It won’t hurt your house at all. Assuming it is a Wisteria, it seems to have small pink flowers on closer inspection?
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
Whoever told you that about it ruining the bricks is quite wrong . As has been said it is a beautiful plant and I envy you for it. Wait till next spring and you will be glad you kept it there .
Looks to me like it's been planted away from the house walls and then well-trained along them. It will not damage the brickwork.
You do need to make sure there are enough training wires to continue guiding it along between the windows and you need to make sure that any long whippy stems do not head up under your gutters or roof tiles. Other than that, In summer, you just need to guide new stems along the wires to extend its reach across the house and cut back any you can't tie in to 7 buds or leaf nodes. This, along with the late winter prune will encourage flowers.
In late Feb/early March, depending on the weather, cut back those shortened stems to 2 buds and, while it's bare and you can see the framework better, remove any stems going in directions that you don't want. As yours is still quite young as wisterias go I would give it a generous coupe of handfuls of slow release fertiliser for roses or tomatoes and make sure it doesn't go thirsty in any long dry spells. Thru the growing season, snip off any shoots that appear on the stems winding up round that arch and keep them clear.
Come spring you'll have something looking like this tho not quite so rustic and there will be a delicious perfume. Ours goes on to have a second flush of flowers and sometimes a third.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast. "We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw
i all
Posts
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Assuming it is a Wisteria, it seems to have small pink flowers on closer inspection?
You do need to make sure there are enough training wires to continue guiding it along between the windows and you need to make sure that any long whippy stems do not head up under your gutters or roof tiles. Other than that, In summer, you just need to guide new stems along the wires to extend its reach across the house and cut back any you can't tie in to 7 buds or leaf nodes. This, along with the late winter prune will encourage flowers.
In late Feb/early March, depending on the weather, cut back those shortened stems to 2 buds and, while it's bare and you can see the framework better, remove any stems going in directions that you don't want. As yours is still quite young as wisterias go I would give it a generous coupe of handfuls of slow release fertiliser for roses or tomatoes and make sure it doesn't go thirsty in any long dry spells. Thru the growing season, snip off any shoots that appear on the stems winding up round that arch and keep them clear.
Come spring you'll have something looking like this tho not quite so rustic and there will be a delicious perfume.
Ours goes on to have a second flush of flowers and sometimes a third.
"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw